


Baa Baa Black Sheep, have you any wool?

by Hello_Im_not_a_possum



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Animal Transformation, Being a magical lighting rod is not fun, Charlie Lawrence is phantomthief_fee's OC, Gen, Hell's Studio Universe, I did not steal, Ink may or may not be alive but it is not evil, It's even less fun when all the magic in your body messes around with you, Psychological Torture, Sammy is a Shapeshifter, Transformation, or a sheepshifter if you will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:29:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24478735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hello_Im_not_a_possum/pseuds/Hello_Im_not_a_possum
Summary: Before the ink, Sammy Lawrence might've been a normal human being who didn't need magical seals on his body to keep him from turning into a humanoid mass of sentient liquid writing material, but he was also a lonely normal human being who had only himself, one cat, and his music. After years of working at the studio, he might've had magic-related issues that came from being at the wrong place at the wrong time, ink, and his boss's impulsiveness, but he also had friends and family.And shape-shifting powers. As a few of his coworkers called them, sheep-shifting powers because the only thing he's been able to turn into so far was a cartoon sheep. Or so they all thought.
Relationships: But it's not the focus - Relationship, Susie Campbell/Sammy Lawrence
Comments: 38
Kudos: 66





	1. "No sir, No sir, not a bag full"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phantomthief_fee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomthief_fee/gifts).



Rearranging his office did absolutely nothing for him as the spray of the ink would seemingly just aim wherever he put his desk. Sammy Lawrence could swear that it was alive and that it wanted to do everything in it's power to either piss him off, scare him, make him miserable, or any mix of the three. He could also almost swear that the pipes were alive too, and whenever they felt like it, they'd gladly help the ink do what it wanted to do to him, even at the expense of their own forms.

Sometimes the pipe was considerate enough to make some kind of weird rumbling noise to warn him to get out of his office before bursting, other days, like this one, it would just burst on him without warning and spray him and whatever he was working on down with ink.

After coughing the vile liquid out of his mouth he mentally erased the '29' off of the 'It has been x days since the ink decided to fuck with me' sign in his head. He was two minutes away from clocking out, 'this' close to a thirty day streak.

He couldn't believe that he had to keep a mirror and a towel in his office because of those damned pipes but he was glad he didn't let his guard down enough to stop bringing in the handy piece of cloth. He took the towel off the coat hanger's hook to wipe the ink out of his eyes and see what it decided to turn him into this time.

The face in the mirror wasn't a rubberhose parody of himself, it wasn't a faceless humanoid mass of ink, it wasn't a new monster, it wasn't an animal (cartoon or otherwise), he didn't feel like he was growing or shrinking, and to his knowledge he wasn't sprouting new limbs.

...

He was still himself.

That was unusual, _suspiciously_ unusual.

At this point, after working at Joey Drew 'If it can go wrong, it WILL go wrong and it will be hilarious to everybody but you' Studios for years, he knew better than to trust that all the ink wanted to do was give nothing but an ordinary ink shower, there was too much magic in the studio for that to happen. It must've been taking it's sweet time for him to let his guard down before doing something nasty to him... He could just feel it in his gut.

"Another graveyard shift, Sammy? You're gonna run Joey broke with all this overtime."

The hollow voice of the cello player snapped him out of his thoughts as he turned to answer her.

"Not tonight. Luckily for Joey, the ink didn't ruin my work this time."

He threw the towel over his shoulders and went to clock out.

"Have a good night."

"You too."

As he walked out of the studio and started down the path to his home, he could've sworn he heard footsteps following him. At first he paid no mind to them, until he heard the cello player's voice behind him. 

"You know, I've always wondered..."

She said while gliding along behind him, the woman always reminded him of a ghost. Or at least, it was probably her. He couldn't see her but the voice did sound similar, but he couldn't shake the feeling of it being ...off.

"How come you never left?"

He raised an eyebrow

"I'm walking home as we speak."

"That's not what I meant. All this magic and chaos... what was once the otherworldly horror of looking into a mirror and seeing something that could only be described as a parody of yourself dulling itself down from a tragedy and nightmare unknown to the human imagination to a mere weekly annoyance. A lot of people in your shoes would've left long before the third transformation."

Well, that was a creepy way to phrase it. A lot of people just ask him 'Why/how the fuck do you put up with this shit?' (Specifically, when they themselves transform for the first time.)

"You're surprisingly talkative tonight."

"I'm curious."

He paused for a moment before cautiously answering.

"...Spite."

"Spite?" She tilted her head to the side in confusion. Or he imagined she did.

"I'm a stubborn man and if any existing force, supernatural or otherwise wants me to stop working here, then they're going to have to come here and drag me out themselves instead of hiding behind bullshit."

She chuckled a bit at his answer.

"Your persistence is fascinating Mr. Lawrence, I hope it helps you in the future."

"Are you implying something?" He frowned.

" _It's coming_ "

" _What_ 's coming? another deadline? another stupid idea from Joey? there's no reason to be vague."

He turned around to look her in the eyes, but there was nobody behind him. He continued to walk home a little faster than usual and didn't turn back until he locked his front door.

"It's just the stress getting to you, Sammy" He told himself as he scrubbed the black stains off of his skin while in the shower. "There's nothing to stay worried about. Worse case scenario, you become something you've probably already been before, you yell at Joey to fix it, and then he does fix it." Watching the ink going down the drain helped his words feel a little bit more real.

But as he went to bed, he couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible was biding it's time to happen.

* * *

He woke up the next morning to Susie using him as a pillow and burying her face into his wool. This familiar sight made him let out a sigh of relief, the ink must've just turned him into a cartoon sheep while he slept, he didn't even have to call Joey this time, he knew how to fix this himself. He gently pushed Susie's head back onto her own pillow before getting out of bed.

Using the trick Charlie taught him, he was once again a non-cartoon human being who was ready to start the day as normal.


	2. "Yes sir, wait! no sir, wait! yes-"

Maybe what the cello player had alluded to was all of the pipes being shittier than usual when GENT had sent Tom out to work on some weird project across the country. Throughout the next few days, the pipes all kept bursting more and more, soaking him in the dreaded ink. Fortunately, they only seemed interested in turning him back into a sheep again but good lord was it annoying having his body treated like a magical light switch.

Sheep, Human, Sheep, Human, Sheep, Human, Sheep, Human, Sheep, Human, Sheep, Human, Sheep, Human, Sheep, Human...

Fuck it.

If the ink wants a goddamned cartoon sheep so badly he'll just show up to work _as_ a sheep. Just try to soak him then you bastard pipes!

That day he took the snickering, double-takes, unauthorized picture-taking, and the confused looks from his coworkers in stride as he conducted the band with the baton in his mouth, stood on three stools stacked on top of each other to be able to sing into the VA mic, and tried to write his music with hooves (which came in varying levels of success). This was a terrible plan, he's only made it to his lunch break and he was already ready to snap.

It was very inconvenient for him to do his job, his dignity was in shambles, he was 'this' close to just flat out biting the next person who'd try to pet him, and he knew that he'd never survive until the end of the week like this, let alone however long it would take the studio's favorite GENT employee to get back.

"If Tom doesn't finally come in to look at those pipes then I'm going to rip every single one of them out of the ^@*# building and smash them to pieces with a hammer."

He rested his head on the table like a grumpy dog while Susie patted his fleece and tried her best to not burst out laughing.

"Joey's stupid ink machine and their *#@%ing pipes are out to get me and I know it."

"What are the pipes planning, Sammy?"

"#&!! if I know!" He threw his hooves up in exasperation "I think they're just playing with my body like it's a light switch for them, or they're trying to drive me completely insane! Or maybe they're leading up to something worse..."

His untouched sandwich did a back flip from the force of his head falling onto the table with a 'THUNK', like a fluffy, angry stone.

"I'm going to kill him."

"...The ink machine?"

"No! Joey Drew! I'm going to kill him brutally and I'm going to make it look like an accident!"

"Sammy, No! he signs both our paychecks."

As if saying his name had summoned him, Joey walked into the room and poured himself a cup of coffee.

"Murder me? Well take a number and get in line Sammy, these deadlines might off me first."

Joey chuckled as he sipped on his coffee.

"Although I am curious on how you'll do it."

"What do you mean?"

"Will you use a Baa-ttle ax to do the job?" He fingergunned. "Ayy? Ayyyyyyy?"

Sammy stared at him with an annoyed expression on his face and the next thing he knew, he was wasting the rest of his lunch break by chasing his boss throughout the studio. Needless to say, the employees were howling with laughter at the sight of Joey running away from an angry cloud with legs and the story department had a field day with that scenario going on.

"I'M SORRY SAMMY, I DIDN'T THINK THAT WOULD UPSET EWE THAT MUCH!"

_*CRASH!*_

"GET BACK HERE SO I CAN KILL YOU!"

* _BANG!_ *

"WE BOTH KNOW YOU WOOL'D NEVER!"

" _Write that down, Dot! Write that down!_ "

After the lunch break ended, he just holed himself up in his sanctuary and did his work in there for the rest of the day. No distractions, no humiliation, no stress. Just him, half a bottle of brandy, and his songs. Okay, maybe not the bottle of Brandy as he couldn't open it with his hooves.

But at least the 'I don't want to get sprayed with ink' part of his terrible plan was still working. The pipes haven't burst near him all day! He wondered if continuing this for until however long it took until Tom gets back from that other job would be worth all of the mental stress, but at least he wasn't constantly soaked to the bone in magical ink.

Yes, his plan was working perfectly, until he was half an hour away from clocking out... and another goddamned pipe burst. What made it worse was that the pipe in his sanctuary had never burst before today, he thought he was safe in here!

As the ink dribbled down his now human body, he marched up the stairs into the ink machine's room, flipped the switch that raised the giant mass of metal and black magic out of the abyss it slumbered in, and began shouting at it.

" _JUST WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?! I'VE TRIED ENDURING YOUR SHIT AND YOU SOAK ME, I'VE TRIED HUMORING YOU BY PLAYING ALONG WITH YOUR STUPID GAME AND YOU SOAK ME ANYWAY, I'VE SUFFERED THROUGH SO MUCH BECAUSE OF YOU! JUST. WHAT. DO. YOU. WANT. YOU. UNHOLY. NIGHTMARE. MACHINE!_ "

He wanted to kick the machine but as it was suspended by chains over a giant hole, he instead just continued to yell, shake his fist at it, and imagined himself sawing the chains off of it and letting it fall into wherever the void below would take it, the machine breaking as soon as it hit the bottom.

It didn't, instead the chains just lowered the Machine back into it's shadowy realm.

"Yeah, you better *^@%ing run you menace."

Wait a second...

He shook the ink off of his hands; No gloves, too detailed to be a cartoon, one, two, three, four, five fingers. He was still an "ordinary" human, except how would he make that noise- The ink machine made a strange gurgling noise which made Sammy turn his head to it, a sinking feeling settling in his gut as he did so.

As he went home that day there was a lot on his mind.


	3. "One for the demon, and one for the angel dame"

He barely slept at all that night and didn't talk much at the breakfast table in the morning. There was just too many red flags for him to feel comfortable. The Cello player's warning, the increased number of pipe bursts, the Ink Machine's gurgle, the fact that he made a cartoonish sound effect in his human form, the fact that his sanctuary, the one place where he was _supposed_ to be safe had been violated by the ink... it HAD to be preparing something big and nasty for him...

Or, has it already _done_ something to him and now it was just waiting until the perfect moment to take effect? Was it going to be a slow and gradual change that started with the sound effect and would alter his body more and more throughout however long the transformation would take? Would it be an instant one? As if it was slowly pulling back a rubber band only to snap it forward? a werewolf-esc transformation? What was it even going to turn him into this time?! ...He hated that he had to use the phrase "this time".

Maybe he'd become something sheep related, if the past couple of days was anything to go off of. A sheep-based demon? A sheep-based angel? a real sheep as opposed to a toon sheep? a cartoon satyr? A realistic satyr? Would animalistic instinct overwhelm him to the point of breaking? Would he run off as a scared, genuine sheep with no human thoughts? Would the worst parts of his humanity mix with his animalistic nature? Would he hurt someone he cared about in that state? Would he-

"Hey Dad? Did something bad happen at work?"

"Huh?"

Sammy turned to see Charlie tugging on his arm and was internally relived that they snapped him out of those thoughts before he got stuck in his own head again.

"...You look really worried about something."

"It's just those pipes again," he sighed "for the past few days they've been breaking a lot more than usual, Tom's across the country and can't fix it, Wally's bitten off more than he can chew already, and I'm just worried that one of these days they're going to do something..." He paused for a moment trying to find the right words to describe it, 'fucking ungodly' and 'Kafkaesque bullshit' seemed accurate, but they were not appropriate phrases to use at the breakfast table. "...scary."

"Scary?" Charlie looked concerned but also intrigued. "What kind of scary?"

Charlie was innocent in the sense that they were a good child who wanted to do good things, they were not innocent in the sense of being ignorant on how cruel the world could be. He wouldn't need to sugarcoat it as much as he would talking to his nieces and nephews, but at the same time, he didn't want to scare Charlie into thinking the ink would kill him or do something worse. He took Charlie's hands in his own as he explained.

"You know how I always get really worried when you and Susie get caught up with the ink? Or how I always say "no" when you ask Joey to use magic on you?"

"Yeah?"

"That's because like Bendy, the ink likes to play 'pranks' on people. Except, unlike Bendy, it doesn't know when to quit, it doesn't know when it's pranks get too mean-spirited, and it doesn't feel remorse when it's pranks go too far. Joey can feel remorse on the ink's behalf and he fixes what it does, but that doesn't change the fact that the ink will only see that as an opportunity to try a new 'prank' on it's victims."

"Then how come mom never seems to be worried when you get caught in the ink?"

"Because your mother knows that I'm a bitter, determined son of a gun and that I can and will march down to wherever Joey's gods are hiding and I will beat them up the day I get too sick of their nonsense. Maybe if I'm feeling generous on that day I'll fight them as a sheep so they have a fair shot."

Susie and Charlie's contagious laughter filled the room at the mental image of a swarm of lovecraftian beings the size of skyscrapers running away in fear from a teeny-tiny rubberhose sheep that briskly trotted after them with a vengeful purpose.

"And I'll be cheering you on when you chase them down, dear!"

He smiled at her as she gave him a kiss on the cheek. God, he loved that woman, he loved his family. But that didn't make him dread going to work any less.

* * *

Another hectic workday, another dollar. As Sammy talked with Jack over how the lyrics fit together with the new melody, Susie walked right into to Joey's office with a question on her mind.

"Ah, hello Ms. Campbell!" Joey chirped as he looked up from the miniature Bendyland model Bertrum had sent him. "What brings you to my office today?"

"Well, it's about the pipes in the music department. I know that Tom's out on that other job but they've been breaking a lot more than usual and I've come to ask you to try to filter the magic out of the pipes because Sammy's been changing a lot because of them and it seems like it's starting to make him worried."

"C-changing?!" Susie was nervous with how quickly Joey's demeanor changed from friendly and jovial to absolutely horrified. "What _kind_ of changes?! and why hasn't he come to me with this!? and how did this happen?!"

"Lately, he's been turning into a sheep whenever the ink hits him. At first it seemed it started off as a mild annoyance that he could fix, but now the ink's getting more and more persistent and he's getting worried and I'm getting worried too."

Joey looked a bit more relieved, but also looked intrigued.

"Ms. Campbell, by chance did either you or Mr. Lawrence receive a letter in the mail around a month ago? One from the studio regarding the pipes?"

"I don't know." Susie shrugged "I think that the cats got the mail before we did, Sammy had to wrestle the bills out of Pancake's mouth and Soot had made a little nest out of paper scraps."

"The bad news is that I'm afraid that I can't comply with your request because the magic in the system is already lower than how it's been in years. The letter I sent a month ago was a memo to all staff warning them that because Tom's across the country, I put a special mixture into the ink machine to dilute the amount of magic in the ink so that nobody would become anything weird during these strict deadlines but the trade off would be that the pipes would get all finicky and burst a lot more often as a response."

" _So that's why they've been bursting a lot more..._ But then why didn't you say anything when you saw Sammy becoming a sheep after an ink shower?"

"I thought you two already knew that and Sammy was just strategically turning into a sheep as the ink hit so that he wouldn't have to deal with the ruined clothes."

"But if it's not the ink, then why is Sammy becoming a sheep all the time?"

"As he is a shape-shifter, I assume that it's probably a placebo effect he's put on himself. If he's under the impression that the ink is still as magical as it usually is and that it _will_ effect him supernaturally, then 'poof'. He's a sheep and it won't stop turning him into a sheep and a sheep alone until after the amount of magic in the ink is back to normal. That's the good news! All we have to do is tell him about the ink's current status and either he'll stop changing because of the ink or at least he'll know that it's just his body's ingrained response to it and that he has nothing to worry about."

"Oh! he'll be relieved to hear that-"

Before she could leave Joey's office to tell Sammy the good news, a loud scream shook the entire building, a scream that sounded a lot like Sammy's voice mixed with the bleating of a sheep.


	4. "One for the wolf who stopped my pain"

Ironically speaking given the history of wolves and sheep, Boris was the best cartoon out of all of the living toons at the studio to have found the new sheep toon in this sorry state.

As he was written to be both a good friend and oblivious for comedic effect, he didn't 'nope' outta there when he saw the ink-splatted window that had a suspicious amount of crimson gleaming on it or turn tail when he heard the inhuman scream, paired with the grotesque snapping, crunching, ripping noises like Bendy and the butcher gang would have, he didn't scream and panic at the sight of the ink-covered creature writhing in pain on the floor upon realizing it was Sammy Lawrence (because he didn't realize it was Sammy in the first place) like Alice probably would have, instead he calmly greeted the creature.

"Hey pally, have you seen Sammy anywhere?"

He got a hoarse gurgle and coughing from the being buried in the ink in response.

"It's okay if you didn't, I'll just keep looking. Thank you anyway!"

He waved goodbye and as he was about to turn and look somewhere else for Sammy until the wolf realized something important, that there were spinning stars over the toon's head and he was covered from head to toe in a thick layer of ink.

"OH NO!"

Boris yanked the towel off of the coat hanger and furiously scrubbed the excess ink off of the toon before it could dissolve him in his disoriented state, revealing an injured black sheep who had a dazed expression on his face matching the swirling stars over his head.

"You alright there, pal? Magic or not, taking a long soak in the ink is _never_ a good idea!"

" _...Mʸ ᵉvᵉʳyᵗhiⁿg ⁱs ⁱⁿ ᵖaⁱⁿ..._ "

"Can you still walk?"

" _ᵐᵐ ʰᵐᵐ_ "

As the sheep stood up on legs that wobbled more than jello in an earthquake, Boris slung the new toon's arm over his shoulders before he could collapse.

" _oᵏᵃy, i ᵗʰoᵘghᵗ ⁱ ᶜᵒulᵈ ʷaˡk... ʷʰᵃᵗ'ˢ ʷʳᵒⁿᵍ ʷⁱᵗʰ ᵐʸ ˡᵉᵍˢ?﹖?_ "

"Well, the good news is that we're really close to the infirmary!" Boris cheerfully declared as he scooped up the sheep bridal style and carried him out of Sammy's office. "They'll patch you up right away!"

* * *

What happened in Sammy's office was a blur to him. One second, he was at his desk working away, the next second, he was covered in ink and in excruciating, mind-numbing pain, the third second, someone was taking him to the studio's infirmary, and now he was put on painkillers. He knew that his mind would be foggier then it already was when they'd take effect, but he didn't know if he was hearing the doctors(???) musicians(???) correctly. Or maybe he was trying to trick himself into thinking that he wasn't hearing them right.

" _Seriously Joey!? now of all times?!_ "

" _Is that a new cartoon?_ "

" _Do you guys think that 'having bad luck' is written into his character? I'm asking in case we need to set up more beds in here._ "

" _I don't think so, but I don't think that I've seen him in any of the cartoons..._ "

" _I honestly think that this studio should at least invest in one veterinarian if Joey's going to keep bringing animal cartoons to life. I got my medical degree in studying the HUMAN body, I don't know how to treat a cartoon sheep!_ "

" _Hey, has anyone seen Sammy? I don't think he's in his office and that scream sounded a lot like him!_ "

" _ⁱ ᵃᵐ ˢᵃᵐᵐʸ_ "

" _I think that the scream was our patient, I heard it too and it sounded like a sheep bleating._ "

" _ⁱ aᵐ sᵃᵐmy_ "

" _Then why did it sound like Sammy?_ "

" _I ᵃm ˢamᵐy_ "

" _Sammy could've voiced this guy._ "

" _ɪ ᴀᴍ sᴀᴍᴍʏ_ "

"Sounds like the painkillers are kicking in, how are you feeling new guy?"

" _ᴊᵉˢᵘˢ ﹠﹪﹗#ⁱⁿᵍ ᴄʰʳⁱˢᵗ..._ "

" _ **AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!**_ "

" _Was that Boris?_ "

" _He sounds scared..._ "

" _I'm going to check on him._ "

" _HEY! remember that we've got a patient on our hands right now!_ "

" _ **Boris, why did you scream like th- OH HOLY $#*! WHY DOES LAWRENCE'S OFFICE LOOK LIKE A MURDER SCENE IN A HORROR FLICK!?!?**_ "

" _Was that Alice?_ "

" _GUYS! THE PATIENT!_ "

" _ **There's only one reason for that that I can think of angel cakes,** **SAMMY WAS MURDERED!**_ "

" _Murdered!?_ "

" _Who could've done such a thing?!_ "

" _What if the killer's still in the studio!?_ "

" _ɪ'ᴍ ɴᴏᴛ ᴍᴜʀᴅᴇʀᴇᴅ, ɪ'ᴍ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ʜᴇʀᴇ﹗ ᵘᵍʰ, ᵗʰⁱˢ ⁱˢ ᵘˢᵉˡᵉˢˢ..._ "

Judging by what he already knew and had now heard, he had been painfully transformed by the ink into a humanoid sheep. His vision was still blurry but his wool-covered arms and visible snout confirmed his suspicions further. While he was confused on why the ink made this feel so much like horror movie's version of a werewolf's transformation, he was relieved that the ink finally got it's terrible prank over with. Now he could just wait until the doctors said he was good to go and then give Joey a piece of his mind.

But why did everyone think he wasn't himself? Everybody knew he was a lighting rod for weird magical bullshit, and Boris even _told_ them that he found him in his office and scrubbed a lot of ink off of him. And yet, in spite of the obvious "Sammy's a humanoid sheep instead of a _sheep_ sheep" conclusion, they made up this story where Joey brought a sheep cartoon voiced by himself to life and it got injured in his office. But why?

* * *

Joey and Susie bolted to the music department the second they heard the first scream, but as Joey's office was nowhere near the area, it didn't matter how fast Susie could run in heels or how fast Joey would race his wheelchair down the halls, they wouldn't even get to the music department's entrance until they heard the second scream.

As they pushed past the crowd of terrified musicians and other employees who were muttering to each other, they saw that Sammy's office was a gruesome sight that felt like it was ripped straight from a horror movie. Ink was splattered everywhere, the mirror in his office was shattered and it's pieces littered the area, the window in his office had a large crack in it that was _not_ there this morning, an unnerving amount of crimson liquid, 'crime scene, do not cross' tape all over the door to Sammy's Office, and Bendy in a detective's costume interrogating Boris, who looked like he was on the verge of bawling his eyes out.

"Alright," Bendy scribbled on his notepad "so your story is that you were walking down to Sammy's office because you wanted to know if the sheet music he gave you was for a piano piece or a piccolo piece, you didn't find Sammy, but you did find a black sheep covered in ink in his office, you took this new guy down to the infirmary because he looked hurt and when you went back to see if Sammy went to his office while you were gone, you saw the crime scene?"

"mm hmm" Boris audibly sniffled and hiccuped "I-I nearly fainted when I saw it!"

"So we've got a new guy alone with Sammy in one scene and he's dead in the next..."

"Bendy, if you're going to suggest that that the sheep killed Sammy I'm going to slap you."

"Y-you don't think I helped the murderer did I?!" Boris gasped " _BENDY YOU GOTTA LOCK ME UP! I HELPED A CRIMINAL!_ "

"WOAH! calm down Bo! we don't have all the pieces yet! 'The new guy murdered Sammy' is what it looks like on the surface, but I think our black sheep is a red herring. According to Norman, there was a scream that _did_ sound like Sammy, but it also sounded like it was mixed in with a sheep's bleating. That means he's not the murderer, he's an eyewitness!" He paused as Boris gasped in shock and Alice looked on with a 'done' expression.

"Here's how I think the scene played out: Sammy's working in his office as usual and then BAM! the murderer swoops in and goes for the kill! Sammy tries to fight back but the killer overpowers him. Then, the new guy walks in and screams because he just saw his own voice actor get murdered and then the killer roughs him up and holds him down. Then, the perp uses the constantly-breaking pipe in Sammy's office to bury our fluffy friend in a batch of magically-nulled ink in the hopes that he'll be too weak to keep himself together and unbury himself in time, trying to kill the new guy by letting his body slowly dissolve into the ink. And he would've gotten away if it too if Boris didn't find him first."

The two were relieved that it sounded like they got Sammy to the infirmary before the ink could actually do something terrible to him, but this 'murder' nonsense would only do more harm than good if it continued.

"Or." Susie piped up "There's a chance that this 'New sheep toon' _is_ Sammy."

"That makes a lot more sense than Sammy getting murdered and Joey making a new cartoon during these deadlines." Alice nodded "He is a shape-shifter after all."

"Oh yeah?" Bendy raised a nonexistent eyebrow. "And how does that explain... EXHIBIT A!" He pulled out an adorable picture of a cat and three kittens sleeping on top of a cartoonish sheep with 'z's floating above his head.

"As you can see, Sammy's sheep form might be a cartoon, but it is also a 100% non-human or humanoid sheep. In addition to this, if we look at the picture closely we can see that Sammy has white fleece and black fur on his face, no horns, and according to Boris, 'appears to be a living rubberhose recreation of a valais blacknose sheep'." he also pulled out a picture of a grumpy-looking humanoid sheep who was reaching for the camera. "The new guy has black fleece and white face-fur, large curly horns, and I don't know enough about sheep to know what kind of breed he is and I didn't ask him."

"OOH! OOH! PICK ME! PICK ME!" Boris raised his hand excitedly "I THINK I KNOW THAT TYPE OF SHEEP!"

"Okay, Boris what is it?"

"Either a Balwen Welsh Mountain sheep or a Zwartble." He said with confidence then scratched his chin "The fact that he's animated and the picture's kinda blurry makes it hard to tell but I'm leaning more towards Mountain sheep because Zwartbles are really rare."

Joey took a closer look at the picture and adjusted his glasses "It's likely that he could be a Skudde judging by the horns. Those can have black wool too."

"Oh yeah! you're right!"

"Why do sheep breeds have all these weird names?"

"So 'Racka sheep' is weird but 'Belphegor Sloth' is a perfectly normal name that rolls off the tongue with ease?"

"You're one to talk miss 'My cousin is a Seraphim'!"

"Guys, please! Maybe sheep think wolf breeds, angel types, and demon types all have weird names too."

"HEY! Wait a minute! Are you guys trying to distract me from the case at hand?! Sammy's been murdered for goodness sake!"

" _ **I'M NOT DEAD, BENDY!**_ " The much more pissed off than usual voice of the composer boomed down the hallway before being followed by a softer but still annoyed " _Why does everyone think I'm dead?! The * &!@ing ink's just messing with me again!_"

"Wait, that sounded like it came from the infirmary..."

"Bendy," Joey put his hand on the toon demon's shoulder "if Sammy's was murdered then how did the killer sneak past all of the musicians, doctors, and Norman Polk himself on this floor? and what did the killer do with the body before leaving the crime scene? There's not much that could be done in that short window of time."

The toon demon thought about it for a while before having a light bulb pop up.

"But _how_?!"


	5. "Yes sir, Yes sir, but not a bag full."

After the rush of the murder mystery in Joey Drew studios had died down to Bendy telling everyone 'False alarm!', 'Sammy's still alive!', 'HEY! you put those party hats and streamers away you jerk!', 'Please ignore the desperate clawing hand prints on the music director's door!', 'Get back to work you gawkers!', 'No, _I_ don't know how this happened either.' and other similar phrases, Joey did his best to explain an abbreviated version of his theory regarding Sammy's change to the remaining crowd.

He could tell by their skeptical gazes that most of them weren't convinced but dispersed anyway because at the very least; Sammy was in fact, NOT murdered and there was NOT a killer running loose in the studio. It was just an accident, just a really fucked up looking and sounding accident.

The workday felt like it was slooooooooooowly streeeeeeeeeeetched out for everyone for a lot of reasons, or rather, one reason that split into a bunch of other reasons like how the body of a hydra splits into it's many heads.

How were the average Joes and Joannes supposed to 'just get back to doing what you were doing earlier' when five minutes ago they were all fully convinced that the Music director was brutally murdered and there was a ruthless killer on the loose?

How were they supposed to know which of the two equally insane rumors where true? 'Sammy became a humanoid sheep in spite of the ink being at it's lowest magic point in literal years because Idunno, he's magical on his own I guess?' and 'Sammy's not dead but he is on a really long smoke break and Joey made a new sheep cartoon voiced by Sammy in spite of the deadlines and now the sheep in the infirmary is trying to do Sammy's job because he's convinced he's the real Sammy while the doctors are trying to convince him to rest' were both outlandish claims even for Joey Drew Studios, but one of them had to be right, right?

Just because toons could recover from injury much faster than humans didn't mean that their injuries were taken any less seriously. A supposed 'toon/human hybrid' was new territory so they didn't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he seemed to be healing faster than a human but slower than a toon.

It would probably be much easier to treat their new patient if the doctors didn't keep having to herd concerned toons and studio employees out of the infirmary. Sammy or not, it was obvious to them that the sheep was delirious from the painkillers and therefore, in no state to be receiving visitors.

A tiny fluffy sheep with a baton in his mouth was an adorably silly conductor that was hard to take seriously but it was better having him than no conductor altogether. Jack tried to fill in for the music Director, but the lyricist struggled with the task due to lack of practice. Nobody was happy with the arrangement.

Susie's job had the most coincidental lines and part for her to voice today: a concerned wife who's husband was put under a strange curse. She saw the irony in the part for her long before Sammy's condition worsened. As of right now, her delivery and emotion in her lines were flawless. _Suspiciously_ flawless.

Joey watched the ticking clock in his office with a mixture of dread and anticipation in his gut. He couldn't deny that he was fascinated by what Sammy's body had done to itself because of the placebo effect and wanted to learn more about how the mental and emotional states of shapeshifters influenced the forms they take. But he also knew that Sammy would yell at him to fix this. Which would be fine normally except he didn't know if he _could_ fix it.

He considered setting up a fake ritual to appease the placebo, but Sammy's record with being effected by magic mixed with Joey's record of magic use didn't make that seem like it was a good idea. The man could end up possessed, or hurt, or worse! He didn't want to think about what 'worse' could be but it was bad!

Sammy himself was agitated and confused. Logically, he knew that he had to stay in the infirmary ~~or he'll either hurt someone by accident or make a complete fool of himself and shatter the remains of his reputation, or both~~ so that the doctors could keep an eye on him in case something went wrong, only one of them was a veterinarian but had never worked with barn animals and didn't know what was 'normal' and what wasn't.

But there was more than just the obvious physical differences between being a human, being a cartoon sheep, and being a mix of the two. For starters, when he was in human form, he had slightly less then the normal amount of energy that a human would have, but that's because he was a workaholic. When he was in his full sheep form, he had more energy than a human, but less energy than a humanoid toon like Bendy, Boris, and Alice did. Joey theorized that this was because his sheep form was closer to a 'background' toon than a 'foreground' toon and thus, didn't make all of the energy a 'foreground' character needed.

He figured he was a 'foreground' toon now as his new form practically filled him with an overabundance of energy that he couldn't burn off, leaving him itching to get out of the stuffy hospital-like room and just get Joey to fix this already. And the icing on the 'fuck my life' cake? The fact that his coworkers seemed to go completely insane in the fifteen minutes he was "dead".

Seriously, why was everybody being so weird?! On a normal day where something like this happened it took less then two seconds to piece together that the man with the notoriously leaky pipes in his office gets cursed by the magic ink a lot. Today, nobody seemed to agree on whether he was "Sammy" or "the new toon" and the ones who knew he was Sammy seemed to look at him with ...concern? nervousness? pity?

Why? This was annoying and inconvenient for him, and it was super uncomfortable to wear clothes over a thick coat of black wool but it was also normal for him to be changed by the ink. Besides, if he's being honest, he's been much worse things before. 'Humanoid sheep' didn't even make it into the top 5 on the list!

If he didn't know any better, he'd think some people avoided him more as a sheepish toon than they did when he was a giant or a demon.

* * *

Joey braced himself for the worst and hoped for the best as he received the note from the doctor.

'Dear Mr. Drew, while Mr. Lawrence(?) does appear to have recovered from the initial wounds and has been released from the infirmary upon his request, our staff is made of mostly doctors and nurses, I am the only veterinarian and I don't work with barn animals very often. If incidents like this keep happening then we highly suggest hiring at least one (preferably more than one) more animal expert on the medical staff as our current staff doesn't know enough about the normal health rates of sheep to compare and contrast them to a magical humanoid sheep. Regards, -Dr. Hackenbrush'

He could already hear the sound of cloven hooves rushing up to his office with a swift yet steady series of ' _Thuds_ ' the second he put the note down on his desk. The old animator was half expecting Sammy to kick the door down at that speed before wondering if he'll try to break the door down with his horns like a battering ram.

"Pffft, a battering ram..." Joey said out loud to himself. "I'd guess that would make him _Rammy Lawrence_!" He laughed at his own joke as the frantic hooves grew louder and louder.

The door swung open with more force than a normal person would put on it and Joey was face-to-face with a grumpy looking sheep.

"Good evening Sammy! glad to hear that you've recovered from that pipe injury."

"We both know why I'm here."

"Ah yes! making you human again..." Joey sucked in air through his teeth as he awkwardly twiddled his thumbs. "well, there's a little bit of a problem with me doing that."

"What is it?" Sammy raised a currently nonexistent eyebrow.

"I Can't change you back."

"Very funny, Joey. It's your ink, your magic, you did this and you can undo this."

"But it's not my magic this time!" Joey pulled a copy of the month-old memo out of a pile of papers and gave it to Sammy. "It's technically yours, I can't change you back!"

If Sammy's already paper-white face _could_ grow paler then it would have as he read the paper that could've prepared him for this month of ink-based mayhem had he seen it around a month ago. 'Ink at it's lowest magic point in years'? 'pipes bursting more often in response'? Why didn't he read this before?! Where did it hide from him!? A mix of anger and fear brewed together as he turned to Joey after crushing the paper.

"Y-you can't change me back?!" Sammy gripped Joey's Shoulders tightly and shook him fiercely " _WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T CHANGE ME BAAAAAAAACK!?_ "

He instantly let Joey go to cover his own snout with his hands. Did... did he just _bleat_? he never bleated! not even when he was a full sheep! It wasn't the ink, but he knew _something_ was wrong, something was very, _very_ wrong.

Sammy took a shaky step back, anger was drowned out with fear, he was almost hyperventilating, and looked absolutely terrified as he stared down at his four-fingered gloved hands with the chilling realization that they were going to stay, possibly forever.

"Now, Sammy..." Joey adjusted his glasses so he was wearing them properly again. "I know that this isn't _ideal_ for you, but if we can stay calm-"

Before Joey could finish, Sammy's toonish energy mixed in with his human fears and before the animator could even look up, the sheep was gone, the only trace of him was the already disappearing dust cloud he kicked up as he ran away.


	6. "Three for the butchers"

He ran and he hid deep in the underbelly of the studio, he didn't remember much about getting there aside from climbing through a maze of airvents, going through the 'Bendyland' warehouse, and getting past a dried-up underground lake to get here. The 'abandoned underground mole people village that a godforsaken animation studio has for some reason' is what those who knew about it referred to it as, but to Sammy Lawrence, it was currently the only place he could think of in the studio that didn't have those damn pipes running through it. It was the only place that was safe.

The village was a place were nobody knew about it went to unless they absolutely HAD to be there, which even then was a rarity. Even in his emotionally driven state he knew it was a stupid thing to come here. He knew he'd probably regret doing it the second his emotions cooled down. But right now, he didn't want anybody to see him like this. As this, silly cartoon sheep... Hell, he could barely stand the idea of looking at himself like this!

It was one thing to look in the mirror and see something inhuman instead of yourself and knowing it was temporary, maybe it would last a few hours, maybe a few days, but after the right spell was recited, you'd be yourself again. It was another thing to be looking into a mirror and _not_ know if the face in it was temporary or if that face would be permanent.

He tugged on his wool, his horns, his snout, and his long floppy ears as if ripping them off would reveal the human being underneath them. Naturally, it did nothing except further prove his inhumanity as he stretched and snapped back into place just like a rubberhose cartoon would've done.

Of course he tried to change himself back into a human the second he remembered that Joey said that it was his magic, that it wasn't the ink that did this to him, but the issue was that he didn't change back. It didn't matter how hard he visualized his human form, when he opened his eyes, he still saw the white-furred snout in his face and that his arms were still covered in thick black wool.

" _I... I can't change back... no matter how hard I try, IT WONT LET ME CHANGE BAAAACK!_ " He yelled in frustration with his cries echoing down the tunnel before he slumped down in defeat, making a mental note to avoid saying words that his throat could turn into bleating.

Would he have to live at the studio like the other toons did? How was anybody supposed to take him seriously as a music director and a conductor when he looked like a goddamned Disney reject!? Was he immortal like this? Would he have to watch Susie, Charlie, Jack, and everybody else growing older and dying one by one while he stayed the same? What if he could never see his family again because of this?! Would he eventually forget that he was ever a human being in the first place?

The tired sheep just curled up in the corner of his new sanctuary and cried himself to sleep. It was easier said than done considering that the waterworks were literal waterfalls.

* * *

Bendy was donned in his detective's outfit once more. This time it wasn't a fake murder for him to solve, it was a missing person's case. _'The music director wasn't murdered, that alone was a tough pill to swallow given the state of his office.'_ he internally monologued as if he was in a film noir _'When I first got this case it was black and_ _white; a scream, the signs of a struggle, and some nasty stains that were more then just ink.'_

_'The man was the black sheep among most of his peers, metaphorically at first and now literally. He had something of a temper and spoke sarcasm better than English. That combined with the stress of the deadlines, the stress of the potential for hours of precious work getting ruined by the pipes at any chance they got, the stress of the chance of ending up on the music director's bad side being doubled and we've got a recipe for disaster. With murder being the secret ingredient...'_

Rain poured down hard outside of the studio, as if encouraging Bendy to go on with the detective theme. _'Except, when I dug deeper into it, Sammy's recent sheep shenanigans seemed to be a great stress reliever for his coworkers, I mean just picture it: you're working hard at your job wondering if you and the other employees are gonna make this deadline, then you turn the corner and see the fluffiest, tiniest, cutest cartoon sheep slinging censored obscenities at a broken pipe.'_

He broke out of character to laugh at the memory of that happening.

 _'Anyway, there's nobody with a motive, no murder weapon, no witnesses, and most importantly, no body found at the crime scene.'_ He blew bubbles out of his pipe as he walked down the studio's empty hallway. _'Then it turns out the music man got both a little more and a little less 'sheepish' than usual. Case closed, right? wrong. Because after getting released from the doctor's, after paying his boss a visit, the man has gone awol, Susie says he's not at home, Jack says he's not at the bar, Johnny says he's not at the record shop, Joey's still searching for a finding spell and hasn't had luck.'_

Taking a file labeled 'TOP SECRET' out of his coat, Bendy stared intently at it for a while before continuing the monologue.

_'I've gotta hunch he's still somewhere in the studio, it's not exactly like he can just go out in public without a disguise without getting on the news. Alice's searching the higher levels for him, Boris is digging down below, And that leads me to three little piggies who might squeal to help me find this sheep: the butcher gang.'_

Bendy flicked on the single lamp in the interrogation room, illuminating three annoyed looking faces.

"Alright, let's make this quick, you three don't like me and I don't like any of you except maybe Edgar sometimes."

"I told ya da scallywag didn' hate us equally, now pay up!" Barely snickered as Charley dug through his pockets and begrudgingly handed the pirate a 10 dollar bill.

Bendy slammed the thick file down on the table, getting the three's attention back on the case at hand.

"See this file?"

"Yes?" the three confirmed in unison.

"This is a file on our missing Music director-"

"Didn't you say he was murdered a few hours ago?" Charley deadpanned as he thought about better things to do with the time he was wasting on this film noir nonsense while Barely and Edgar flipped through the file.

"Hey! If he didn't want everybody to think he was getting murdered, he wouldn't've screamed like he was being murdered."

"He's got a point boss, what if Sammy was murdered, and then... he was UN-murdered and now he's missing!"

"If 'e was mourdered who would go through all da trouble of bringin' 'im back from da dead?"

"Joey." everybody deadpanned in unison.

"Back on topic: Sammy's missing but somewhere in the studio, where is he?"

"Why would we know?" Charley scoffed while turning his back to Bendy. "We almost never interact with him. And even if we did know where he was, it's obvious he wants to be left alone, so why would we send you to pester him?"

 _'Charley was a tricky nut to crack, but I don't think I needed to break him to make him spill, I only needed to know his favorite color: green.'_ Bendy took a wad of cash out of his pocket and audibly flipped through it in Charley's ear, the Butcher gang leader immediately turning to face the grinning detective devil.

"That got your attention quickly."

"I told you, we don't KNOW anything about Sammy!" Charley smacked the wad of cash away from him and pulled Bendy's hat down over his head. "Even if we wanted to "fess up" we couldn't."

"Hey boss? ya might wanna take a good looksee at d'ese pictas 'ere."

"Yeah! it's real important!"

The butcher gang made a group huddle and Bendy could hear that they were whispering about something, but he didn't know what. Naturally he tried to sneak into the huddle but was shooed out every time.

After the huddle broke, Charley slid the file back to Bendy.

"As I said before, none of us know Sammy and can't tell you where he is. BUT, judging by what we learned, we could point you in the right direction..."

"...For a price." Bendy smirked.

"You know me too well, demon." Charley smirked back.

Bendy took half of the bills out of the wad and slid it over.

"You'll get the other half after you spill."

"Our friend looks like he has a habit of locking himself away when he goes through hard times, this sanctuary of his where he can unwind, do his job in peace, and most importantly, NOT get soaked by the ink."

"I've already checked, he's not there."

"I'm not finished talking, Bendy." Charley turned Bendy around before he could walk out on them "Let's pretend we're Sammy, during the magic drought, the pipes burst all the time, we were under the impression that the ink's still as magic as ever so we keep turning into a sheep and back again and it's really annoying! Then one day we're just doing our job in our sanctuary, the one place where we're free from the constant ink showers... And then the pipe in our sanctuary bursts and soaks us in ink, right?"

"Right..."

"Then of course he wouldn't be in there! The pipe in his sanctuary violated his trust during a terrible time! If he really is in the studio and you want to find him, you have to look for places in the studio that _DON'T_ have ink pipes."

"You know, you say you don't know him but I have a feeling you two get along real swell."

"Not as well as you think." Charley shrugged. "We're just two busy men with two different lives and schedules."

"But a place that _doesn't_ have ink pipes in Joey Drew Studios? Charley, you might as well tell me he's sipping tea on the moon!"

"Well," Edgar piped up "whenever I get sick of the ink ruining my webs, I just spin them in the warehouses on the lower levels! ink doesn't splatter as often down there. Also I think you gotta look for somewhere less popular than the carnival one, Sammy doesn't sound like a people person."

"An' dat dere wool coat of his looks awful warm, whereva 'e is must be real cold if he plans ta stay."

"Deep, cold, no ink, and no people. got it! Thank you gentlemen, you've been a great help."

"aHEM?" Charley held out his hand expectantly.

"Yeah, yeah, I didn't forget." Bendy grumbled as he handed Charley the rest of the money.

"I never thought you did, but _I_ know you too well."

 _'With that, the butcher gang left without a trace, never to be seen again until the plot called for it.'_ He walked over to the nearest directions sign in the studio. _'Other folks might take what they had said with a grain of salt as it was well known that they were crooks. But I couldn't deny that they were honest crooks until they had to fight dirty. I called up a friend of mine who'd find Sammy a lot faster then I could, mostly because he was closer.'_

"Hey Boris? you're still in the Me-land warehouse right?"


	7. "No sir, Not on me, but I've got some at home."

_'Boris said he was already on the way when I called him, said something about hearing someone crying? All of the workers are clocked out by now and Joey's still in his office so he's got a hunch that the person down there is Sammy. This 'toon up' of his might be worse than we thought if that's the case, Sammy never cries! And that's why I took a quick detour to bring in back up.'_

Alice cracked her halo and shook it like a glow stick, lighting up the air vents enough for her and Bendy to see.

"Are you really sure he's in here? You got your 'lead' from the _butcher gang_ of all people, and most of it's from _Charley!_ "

"The air vents themselves? no. The place PAST them? yes. It's called a shortcut, Angel cake, elevator's out of order and if we took the stairs we'd be stuck on them for years!"

_'Speaking from experience, the whole 'angel verses demon' thing isn't actually all that intense or whatever mortals think it is, the eons buried that hatchet down to a petty rivalry, but what DOES get an angel's blood boiling is a crooked priest who's in it for the money. And take a good guess who in the B gang used to wear the cross for coins? That dame wouldn't trust any of the Butchers as far as she could clobber 'em and I've seen her throw them pretty far in the past. I saw this coming and it took a bit of convincing on my part to get her on aboard, but thankfully she's got a soft spot for the grumpy music director.'_

_'The maze of vents was a nightmare to navigate, even with the light, still faster then the stairs but good lord is this a pain in the-'_

"Are you internally monologuing again?"

"Yep, helps keep me focused."

_'Now where was I? Oh yeah, the vents, the only good things about them was that they were faster then the stairs, big enough for people to fit in them but small enough for our territorial resident spider to not spin webs in them.'_

* * *

Boris had gone from the Bendyland warehouse deep down into a rather scary-looking tunnel that had a canal flowing through it. Luckily, it was shallow enough for him to wade through without any problems, but he could've sworn that the canal was all dried up the last time he was here. Maybe that meant that Sammy really was down here, he did hear crying after all and usually when toons cry, they cry hard.

Confirming his suspicions, the previously empty village now had a few candles that looked like they've been burning for a while, their existence pointing to exactly one resident who was curled up in the corner of the boarded up hovel in the middle of 'town'.

"Hey Sammy," Boris knocked on the makeshift door. "Are you okay?"

"Mmph." Was the sheep's only response.

"Sammy," Boris knocked again "I know you don't wanna see anybody right now, but we're really worried about you."

Boris heard movement from the other side and visibly perked up, but was confused and a little nervous when Sammy handed him an ax from the other side.

"Just cut down the boards."

Okay, that's a really weird door system but he's not there to judge, he's here to help.

The inside of the hovel was a lot gloomier than Sammy's last sanctuary, it was almost completely empty save for the air vent on the wall. Boris pulled out a 'fainting couch' and an armchair, he took the armchair while Sammy could see where he was going with this and flopped down on the couch.

"So I see you've been under a lot of stress lately during the pipes' magic drought," the wolf pulled out a notepad and his reading glasses "do you wanna talk about it?"

"What is there to talk about? I ruined my own body by turning it into _this_ and now I can't change back. Now I'm stuck like this for the rest of my possibly eternal life."

"Hmm..." Boris scribbled down on the notepad. "And when you first came in contact with magic ink and became an ink monster for the very first time, were you worried that you were gonna be stuck like that forever too?"

"Well, after I drank purple ink while I was that thing, I realized that the fate of my humanity lied in the hands of Joey Drew, I didn't know if he _could_ fix that so yes, I did think I was going to be stuck like that for the rest of my life. But that's different."

"Yeah, purple ink does draw out the worst jitterbugs in people, I don't know why we keep that color..."

"Not _that_ , this situation. I was a cursed mass of living ink hyped up on weird magical alcohol that got me drunk on fear instead of getting me _drunk,_ that and I didn't know that Joey actually knew what he was doing with magic at the time. This time, I think my body was sick of switching b- turning me from a sheep into a human again, so it took both forms and merged them into one."

"Interesting..." Boris's pen moved very quickly against the notepad "what makes you think that your forms merged?"

"The fact that when I became this thing I felt like my body was being ripped apart and melted back together."

"Ouch."

"Understatement of the &!#$ing decade."

"Did other transformations feel like that or is this the first time?"

"First time."

"And what do you plan to do now?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I don't think you want to spend the rest of your life in this creepy dump."

"Maybe that is my plan, I don't know what else to do when I don't want people to see me like this and either think I'm not me or know I can't change back, I don't want to stay as a toon forever- no offence."

"None taken, I'd probably be really scared too if I was in your shoes." He also scribbled down: _'do sheep have shoes or is that a horse only thing?'_

"Oh? and what would you do in my shoes?"

"Sammy, I'm not going to pretend that I understand your struggles and triumphs as a human being. I've never properly been human before and I even if I did become human I'd probably never 'get it' in the same way you and the rest of the folks at the studio do."

"What about in reverse? Let's pretend that one day you become a regular human being and you find out that you're stuck like that forever, what would you do?"

"Well, naturally I'd freak out at first..."

"Exactly."

"And then I'd ask Joey, Henry, and probably a lot of other people for help."

"But they couldn't help you turn back!"

"I know, but I wouldn't ask them to. I'd ask them to help me cope with the situation, and maybe to show me the ropes about being human, I know that it'll be tricky to adjust and that I'd miss a lot of things about being a toon, but I don't think it'll be all bad being human, and I'd figure out how to cross the bridges when I got to them."

Sammy slumped over on the couch, sighing loudly.

"You know, you're not alone either. If this is permanent, and you really are a toon forever, you don't have to be afraid to ask the rest of us for help. I know you're not exactly comfortable with doing that... But if it helps you to know, then I want you to know."

"...Thanks Boris, you're a really good friend."

"Anytime."

Then, the cover for the air vent burst open, revealing a familiar grinning demon in a detective's costume and a very relieved looking angel.

"We're free! we're finally free from those air vents-"

"SAMMY?!"

The angel and demon did a double take on the musician toon, _musician_ toon as opposed to a sheep.

"What?"

"You're a toon!"

Sammy rolled his eyes "I've noticed."

"No I mean..." Bendy failed to explain and just pulled a mirror out of his coat "look!"

Sammy's jaw dropped as he saw his reflection, he was indeed, still a cartoon but he had his skin back, his hair, his face... It was him!

"What?!" He took a look at his own arms, no black wool but he did have the classic four-fingered gloves. "But... but how? I thought..."

"Idunno? emotional state or something? none of us are shapeshifters."

Boris scooped Sammy up in one of his famous 'wolf hugs'.

"ACK! Boris!?"

"SAMMY! You won't believe this, but you changed! you're human again!"

Sammy rolled his eyes and smiled "Yeah... I noticed."

* * *

As the music director had feared, his transformation was indeed permanent. But unlike how he expected it to be, he discovered that he could switch between that form, his normal form, his full sheep form, and apparently, other forms as well. Most of this reminded him of the time he first became a shapeshifter, in that it was a learning process of the supernatural variety. That was okay with him, he would rather learn then get stuck again.

And due to the insane amount of stress that he had endured during the magic pipe drought, it was only natural that he took a vacation as soon as the deadlines had passed.

"Well would you look at that!" Alice chirped as she opened the letter "he sent us a postcard!"

"C'mon angel! Lemme see!" Bendy snatched the picture from the Angel and his smile automatically sunk into a frown as soon as he saw it and what Sammy wrote on it. "He's dead to me. That old goat is dead to me."

"Isn't he a sheep?"

"I don't care! When he get's back I'm turning him into lamb stew!"

"Lambs are _baby_ sheep! Sammy's a grown ram!"

"Isn't a ram a type of goat?"

"NO!"

The toons devolved into an argument while Joey picked up the picture and laughed.

"It looks like that man does still have a healthy sense of humor..."

The picture was of Sammy, Susie, and Charlie. Sammy was in his humanoid sheep form and all three of them were wearing trenchcoats, giant sunglasses, and large hats. Together, they all kinda looked like secret agents! This on it's own was a rather charming family picture, but that wasn't the problem. The 'problem' was that Sammy took his family to Disneyland and had signed the postcard _'Yes Bendy, I did do this because you tried to convince everybody that I died.'_


End file.
